BILL STARLINGAnna Luce, embracing her daughter, Rancey, has been on two journeys: to do everything within her power to help Rancey, who has Rett Syndrome, and set into motion a biomedical research foundation about the genetic disorder; and a personal journey of faith. “I’m interested in God’s divine purpose in our suffering,” she says. “It was deepened and awakened with Rancey.” Luce, involved with the interfaith women’s conference, Womenspeak2010, finds that going to a gathering like Womenspeak enables her to share stories of her journey, and find inspiration, among other women. Why do women gather for faith conferences? What do women share with one another that is distinctive, even different, than what is shared by men?

On the weekend of March 12-14, Womenspeak 2010, a nondenominational, faith-oriented conference will take place in Mobile.

At least 700 women are expected, say the organizers, from at least 40 states. Keynote speakers include Paula D’Arcy, a psychotherapist and grief counselor, and Erin Gruwell, author of “The Freedom Writers Diary.”

In addition to workshops, there will also be tables where women from all walks and faiths can sit and visit and share stories with one another.

Anna Luce, Ashley Rabun, and Margaret Richey, from the Mobile area, will be among those women.

By gathering with other women, they say, they find wisdom, inspiration.

Anna Luce: Loving Rancey

Nineteen years ago, when Anna McCown Luce gave birth to her third child, Rancey, there was all the joy one could expect in having a beautiful, seemingly perfect baby girl. Within a year-and-a-half, though, little blue-eyed, red-haired Rancey began to present symptoms of a malady that was both puzzling, and frightening. Soon Rancey was diagnosed with Rett Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that, says Luce, results in extreme developmental delay. It is the most debilitating form of autism, she says, and is often confused with cerebral palsy.

For Luce, Rancey’s condition set into motion parallel journeys on her part. The first, along with the love and support of her husband, Robin, was to find out everything possible about Rett Syndrome, to make contact with other families whose children suffered from this disorder, and to help set up a biomedical research foundation.

There was an interior journey going on, too, in Luce’s mind and heart.

Rancey’s ordeal, Luce says, was spiritually “transformational” to her and her family, including her three other children.

“When the world doesn’t give you the answers,” she says, “God is there. God, in so many ways, gave me the confidence that Rancey’s life was in his hands, that he was going to use her life for others, for his divine purpose. And he has. It’s been transformational for many people.”

Luce is a volunteer coordinator for the Womenspeak 2010 conference.

“I’m looking to grow in my spirituality,” she says. “I’m looking to hear the voice within, my God-given voice, that will speak to me as to what’s next, and for direction."

Being with other women at Womenspeak 2010, or any other spirit-infused gathering, she says, helps her find that direction.

The time she spends with her daughter, of course, is still most important of all.

When she visits Rancey now at the Mulherin Custodial Home in Mobile, lifting her from her wheelchair, embracing her, Rancey looks off toward the bright light of the window, smiles. Luce envelops her daughter with a mother’s profound love.

Ashley Rabun: A SpIritual Journey

Ashley Toomey Rabun knows what it’s like to be a woman in what she refers to as “a man-dominated” profession. As an executive in the financial services industry, she lived far from Mobile for 30 years before recently returning to settle back home.

“When I was president of the mutual fund company,” she says, “I was one of three women in this capacity in the nation.”

The 1974 Auburn graduate, raised in a religious family, admits that, during her 30s and 40s, “I had lost a lot of my faith.”

“In the past 5 or 6 years I realized I was searching for something more. I started doing a lot of reading and introspection, and realized that God is within us. I’m looking for the spiritual journey of the second half of my life.”

She read the meditations and poetry of the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton. She also read the works of Paula D’Arcy, founder of the Red Bird Foundation.

The Red Bird Foundation is sponsoring Womenspeak 2010.

“I realized,” says Rabun, “that the most important walk we can walk through our life is when we find God inside. God is so much more about the similarities in every single being he has created, not the differences.”

Rabun believes that a congregating of women, of different backgrounds and faiths, offers the chance for recognizing those similarities.

“You get women together from all over the world and we can understand so much more about where we are all exactly the same inside. The God within us.

“If we let that come up, women have a special ability to listen and heal. We can start changing the world, starting with our own home and reaching out beyond.”

Margaret Richey: A Life of Prayer

Margaret Richey, associate pastor at Gulf Coast Christian Center in Mobile (www.gulfcoastchristiancenter.com), grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her church experience as a child in Brooklyn, she recalls, was not a good one because of racial differences within her family.

“My mom was a white Puerto Rican, my dad a black Puerto Rican. My dad was not really welcomed in the church.”

But her parents were deeply religious at home. “I really learned love from my parents,” she says, “a deep-rooted love that it didn’t matter. They still loved God.”

When she was 30, married and with children, Richey, now 59, had a realization: “I had to put my eyes on the God that loves me. I had such an experience with God in my life I just fell in love with him. This is what was missing.”

Richey’s religious leadership is done in conjunction with her pastor husband, David Richey. Together they moved to Mobile to their “first mission station. We felt the call of God.”

First with the International Gospel Outreach in Semmes, then with Operation Mobile, “we worked with sick children in the inner city. We’ve worked every community. We take the love of God to the children.

“We have a church full of young people,” she says, “children that say they wouldn’t have made it. We want to do more. I cry every time a teenager is shot in Mobile.

“We’ve got to do something as a church. Love makes a difference.”

In her ministry, Richey has traveled all over the world. “I’ve been to 32 nations,” she says.

And she has been at religious gatherings of women of many different faiths.

“It’s almost like women can let their hair down, so to speak,” she explains.

“There’s just a freedom that comes from women understanding the hurt, the difficulties they might go through.

“Not that they can’t share it with a man, but there’s an openness,” she says, when those difficulties are shared with other women.